Friends and Home Improvements

Earlier this week, we met our friends Marcia and Bob at Mt. Athos Cafe in Florence. We know them from the Church of the Transfiguration in Evergreen, CO. They spend part of the winter in Gold Canyon, just east of Mesa, so Florence was a good meeting spot. We had a good lunch and three hours of great conversation.



That was the first time we had been to Mt. Athos, but other volunteers here recommended it and we are glad we tried it out. As we were winding up our visit, we could smell baking bread. I couldn't resist showing you the luscious looking loaves.



During the past two weeks, we have made a number of improvements to our home. First, we ordered new lawn chairs. John has never liked sitting in the inexpensive folding chairs we have owned. Within the last year, we read about the Strong Back chair in another RV blog. We both love the chairs! They really give good back support. If you are interested in them, they are available here on line.



The second improvement was sun screens on several of our windows. We fell in the love with the large picture window on the door side of our 5th-wheel trailer. It is great--unless we are parked facing south or west. Sometimes we have to put an aluminum shield in the window to keep the RV cool. So we investigated sun screens. This is how it looks.



As I was looking at the possible colors for the screens, I thought I wanted white, since the trailer is white. But then I looked at the windows and they appear black from the outside. And it really is amazing, but from the inside you can see the outside view clearly. The amount of daylight in the trailer is a little less, but we don't sacrifice the view and we won't need to completely block the windows when they sun shines in. It was a good purchase--and very reasonably priced.

The third improvement has been a new TV in the bedroom. We don't watch that TV very often, but we do use it occasionally. The old TV was large and heavy.



We picked up a small flat-screen TV at Wal-Mart. First we just set it in the opening.



Then John measured the opening in the cabinet, bought a piece of plywood and stained it. This is during the measuring step.



And this is the finished project. It looks great, we are carrying a lot less weight, and we have gained some new storage space. Great work, sweetheart!